Only in America. Matt Frei
are probably tourists who have come to marvel at the theatre of power.
The focal point of the Mall is the 555-foot-high obelisk of the Washington Monument. This is the white needle at the heart of the city. On a clear day you can see it for miles before you land at the capital’s airport. After sunset two red lights blink at the approaching aircraft and the needle looks suspiciously like an emaciated member of the Ku Klux Klan with conjunctivitis. On one side of the monument, set back among trees and a small park, is the White House. On the other sits the brooding Smithsonian Castle, the institution that was founded in 1861 thanks to a bequest by the Englishman James Smithson. Its architecture can best be described as Gothic Victorian. Resembling a red brick teacher training college in Middle England, it looks out of place amid the neoclassical splendour of Washington. Smithson was a scientist who made a fortune, loved the idea of America but never actually went there. The seed money from his foundation has funded all the great museums that line the Mall and, astonishingly for America, charge no entry fee.
At the Virginia end of the Mall, Abraham Lincoln slumps on his throne surrounded by marble columns and stone slabs, etched with quotes from the Gettysburg Address. The expression on his bearded face is a curious mixture of resignation and wisdom. It’s what you might expect from a gloomy fellow who suffered severe bouts of depression and steered his country through the bloodiest conflict America has ever fought. Irreverent pigeons congregate on his head and use it as a lavatory. At the other end, straddling the hill it is named after, sits the Capitol, the tallest building in Washington, above which no other edifice is allowed to rise. After two hundred years it still dominates the skyline and has avoided being dwarfed by the corporate spires that define virtually every other American city. White and resplendent, the Capitol sits like a huge, domed wedding cake on top of a pedestal. It is both a monument celebrating ‘the greatest democracy on earth’, as the tour guides put it, and a living, breathing, lunching, legislating parliament. Most Americans admire the building and what it stands for but have a very dim view of the electors who toil inside it. Opinion polls repeatedly give the assembly of congressmen and senators pitifully low marks of approval. In fact it’s hardly surprising that Washington, DC, is so hated. It is after all the favourite haunt of America’s three most loathed professions: lawyers, politicians and lobbyists. The latter are particularly despised: a lobbyist is an amalgam of the first two enriched by huge fees. Eighty per cent of congressmen and women end up working for lobby firms. The city boasts an astonishing 32,000 lobbyists, compared to 8000 policemen and 3000 teachers.
Every four years, in the middle of January, the American public is prepared to turn its gaze away from the entrails of government and the Capitol becomes a giant stage for the celebration of the presidency. Think of it as an arranged wedding that finally takes place after months of wrangling over the dowry, fights among the family factions and arguments about the cost of the party. Presidential election campaigns are marathons of mutual malice. The inauguration of the winner is an opportunity for everyone to kiss and make up and celebrate the commander-in-chief before the next round of mud-slinging. Even after George W. Bush won the bruising Florida recount in 2000 and was hoisted across the finishing line by the Supreme Court, the bile and acrimony were suspended for a day as Al Gore, the former Vice President, graciously congratulated his opponent and President Bush took the oath of office.
On that occasion, too, the grand terrace in front of Capitol Hill was decked with red, white and blue bunting. Giant flags were draped over the sides. An arena of seats rose out of the ground and the Mall was packed with tourists and local citizens watching the ceremony on super-sized video screens and hundreds of policemen and secret service agents watching the audience. If the President is the bride on Inauguration Day, the Constitution is the groom. Every presidency is a continuation of the sacred covenant between the elected leader and the founding fathers, who framed the Constitution. No wonder this is an occasion when arch rhetoric is pushing at an open door. George Bush may not be known for his articulacy but after his re-election in 2004 he and his principal speech writer, a fellow born-again Christian called Michael Gerson, worked tirelessly to earn their place in The Book of Great Quotations. On a freezing day, while thousands shivered in the snow, George Bush mounted the podium under leaden skies and talked about America’s mission ‘to end tyranny on our earth’, the ‘universal God-given right to liberty’ and the nation’s burden to help bestow this gift on the less fortunate inhabitants of this planet. The reality of a bruising, failing war in Iraq, a mounting body count, Osama bin Laden on the loose and the blatant unwillingness of many countries to have Lady Liberty thrust upon them barely impinged on the audience. They were hooked. On occasions patriotic rhetoric seems like a benign opium of the masses. It encourages them once again to believe and for a brief moment it’s as if the entire nation was entranced by the ritual being enacted before their eyes.
I was standing next to Tom and Amy from Missouri. Like so many on the Mall they had timed their visit to the Nation’s Capital to coincide with the inauguration. They had not voted for George Bush. In fact, they didn’t much like him. But they really wanted to see an American President say the oath of office on the altar of democracy. Amy was wrapped up like an Arctic explorer and she and her husband had stood outside for two hours before the President started his speech. In the gap between hat and scarf I detected a tear running down a red cheek as the commander-in-chief promised to expand the horizons of liberty. When the national anthem was played everyone around me solemnly laid their right hands on their chests and sang along. I fumbled nervously with my scarf, wishing I had a large sign on my hat declaring: ‘This isn’t treason. I am a foreigner!’ Even if Americans don’t like the reality of the President who is running their country, they are head over heels in love with the idea of the presidency.
If America is a nation founded on the ideas of liberty and equality, Washington is the temple that keeps the ideas preserved in aspic. If those ideas had been embodied in a man or a woman he or she would be embalmed in an air-conditioned mausoleum, as Mao or Lenin once were. Instead, Washington offers a tour of monuments, memorials and institutions that hammers home the gist of America with relentless rhetorical force. There is nothing subtle about this. In fact, the only other capital I know where the official architecture feels this didactic is Beijing. The giant red banners in Tiananmen Square, extolling the virtues of the revolution and the victory of the proletariat, the huge portrait of Mao over the gate of the Forbidden City are as crass as the cult of liberty trumpeted by Washington. The equivalent of the workers’ delegation shuffling awe-struck through the Great Hall of the People is the thousands of school tours that pay homage to the Nation’s Capital and the founding fathers every week.
On a warm spring day, when the cherry blossom fills the trees around the Tidal Basin with pink cotton candy and when the air is filled with the sweet scent of jasmine, the Mall is a truly delightful place to hang out. I joined a group of eighth-grade teenagers from a high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who were being shepherded around the capital by their history teacher. The students were a mixture of African American, Hispanic and Caucasian. Apart from one boy named Lester, none of them had been to Washington before. A meticulously scrubbed offspring of military parents, Harrison Howard had one of those American names that seem to work better backwards. He also had the annoying habit of interrupting the history teacher in the prime of his passion and the flow of rhetoric about our great founding fathers. Mr Wyeth sported a disconcerting goatee and a Paisley bow tie, which he twisted as if it was a wind-up key. He wore the kind of Stars and Stripes lapel badges that became the fashion in the White House after 9/11. He spoke fluently and passionately about the Gettysburg Address, the Bill of Rights and the numerous wars fought to defend liberty. ‘The war on terror started long before our homeland was attacked,’ he concluded at one point. His jaded audience fiddled longingly with their silent iPods.
There were twenty students in the group, only ten of whom had ever been outside their home state. What most of them really wanted to do – and who could blame them? – was to visit Disneyworld in Florida, see Hollywood or gawp at Times Square in New York. Instead they found themselves on a gruelling tour of Washington that sounded like an intensive refresher course in patriotism and sacrifice. On Monday they went to see the Jefferson Memorial, which is a splendid dome, modelled on the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson. America’s first Secretary of State, drafter of the Declaration of Independence stands twenty feet tall, looking sternly towards the horizon or perhaps the kebab van on the other side of